I highly doubt that random batches from 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 are to blame here, people are reporting noise every year, this is just a noisy design.
I would not exclude the possibility that the Behringer B5 could very well be a better design.

I've posted PCB images in my thread linked in the previous post.

Interesting topic, maybe someone with adequate knowledge will, based on your pictures, be able to see if there's something wrong or inconsistencies of some sort. Luckily I don't experience any particular noise issues. On the other hand I do believe that the noise figures sE claims are on the optimistic side - so if anything can be made better, I'm of course all in.
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Mads

Does anyone know a measuring method that would shave 3–6 dB(A) from a self-noise measurement? It would be a good place to start

They do specify (A) in their figure and that can only be A-Weighting defined in the international IEC 61672 standard.

That's what I thought! However, A is just the weighting of the noise itself, post-capture if you will. I do not know of any other measurement technique rather than calibrating the sensitivity and measuring self-noise in an anechoic chamber, but something tells me most mic manufacturers aren't doing that to get to their noise level rating.

I can't think of a different way to measure it, but IEC standards in this area are not legally required, so unless stated explicitly I will just assume they're not using it but rather calculating it indirectly somehow.

The only way I have seen for manufacturers to actively obscure the self-noise rating is just not to state it at all, and making the consumer go through hoops calculating it through signal-to-noise and max SPL ratings, but it really does look suspect in this particular case. 13 dB(A) is lower than Neumann and DPA high-end ratings for mics many times the price, and nobody seems to have anything particularly good to say about these mics, in terms of self-noise at least.

Any more info on the noise issues or general quality of the Se8’s

No issues whatsoever. Main pair in this chamber music recording (dry sound because of difficult acoustics)

But pretty good dry sound
Which probably also means that the main pair was rather low in this or..?

Was it the cordiod or the omni sE8?

I wonder why some mentions really bad self-noise, now that others (myself included) don't experience more noise than similar sdc's.

If I had noise issues, I would definitely contact sE and ask (and have them swapped if needed).

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Mads

Thanx! I always use the cardioid caps in that room, probably at 2m height and 1,5/2m from the strings. I've used the omnis in a church on a baroque piece last july, they worked very well.